The Intersection of Gender, Race and Cultural Boundaries, or Why is Computer Science in Malaysia Dominated by Women?

The intersection of gender, race and cultural boundaries, or why is computer science in Malaysia...
Jared O'Leary
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In this episode I unpack Mellström’s (2009) publication titled “The intersection of gender, race and cultural boundaries, or why is computer science in Malaysia dominated by women?,” which “points to a western bias of gender and technology studies, and argues for cross-cultural work and intersectional understandings including race, class, age and sexuality” (p. 885).

  • Welcome back to another episode of the CSK8 podcast.

    My name is Jared O'Leary.

    Each week of the podcast alternates between an interview with a guest

    or multiple guests and a solo episode where it unpacks some scholarship.

    In this week's particular episode, I am unpacking the paper titled

    The Intersection of Gender, Race and Cultural Boundaries.

    Or why is computer science in Malaysia dominated by women?

    And this particular paper

    was written by Ulf malmstrom and apologies if I mispronounced your name.

    As always, if you go to the show notes which you can find in the description

    of this particular episode, or by visiting Gerard O'Leary Bcom,

    you can find a direct link to the paper itself.

    So for interested in reading this, make sure you check out the show notes.

    All right, so here's the abstract for this particular paper.

    Quote, This paper reports an investigation of how

    and why computer science in Malaysia is dominated by women,

    inspired by recent critical interventions in gender and technology studies.

    The paper aims to open up more culturally situated, analyzes

    of the gendering of technology or the technology of gendering.

    With the Malaysian case exemplifying the core of the argument,

    the paper argues along four different strands of critical thought.

    One a critique of the analytical asymmetry

    in the process of co-production in gender and technology studies.

    Two A critique of a Western bias in gender in technology studies

    advocating more context, sensitivity

    and focus on the cultural embeddedness of gender and technology relations.

    Three A critique that pays more attention to spatial practices and body

    politics in regard to race, class and gender in relation to technology

    and for a critique of Western positional notions of the gender configurations

    that opens up for more fluid constructions of gender identity,

    including the many crossovers

    between relational and positional definitions of femininity and masculinity.

    So from page

    a really good single sentence summary.

    So this paper quote points to a Western bias of gender and technology

    studies and argues for cross-cultural work and intersectional understandings,

    including race, class, age and sexuality, end quote.

    Now, one caveat

    that I want to give or disclaimer at the start of this particular episode

    is that this paper appears to conflate computer science

    with information technology, engineering or technology in general.

    However, this could just be the result of using different terms

    in different cultures.

    Now, that being said, the main point of this article

    is still relevant to the field.

    Even if we ignore the debate about whether this study

    is in fact investigating computer science or another field.

    So at the start of this paper, the authors argues

    that there is a Western bias in discourse around gender and technology.

    So in particular, we tend to frame the discussions

    as though technology, science or engineering is considered more masculine

    from a global perspective rather than just a local perspective.

    And the author uses the phrase the woman problem

    in gender and technology studies, and that the quote woman problem

    refers to the exclusion of women in science and engineering.

    So the author argues that this is especially the case for information

    technology.

    Quote, This relative lack of women is seen as a problem,

    while a predominance of men is regarded as the norm in quote from page 86.

    Now, in this introduction,

    the author argues that while we understand that it appears as though

    women are excluded from the field or at least feel unwelcome in the field,

    quote, little is known about the women who actually decide

    to study computer science and quote from page 86.

    So this particular paper will kind of talk a little bit about that

    within Malaysia in particular.

    Now, interestingly, although the author notes

    that the number of women from the late eighties and early nineties has declined

    to the late 2000s in terms of numbers of women in computer science,

    these numbers tend to focus on the United States

    and do not include data from other countries.

    This is really important.

    So for myself as a podcast host, one things I consider

    is not just providing Western lenses or data from Western countries alone.

    So we need to talk beyond just local, but also discuss

    what's going on globally and see how that might be able to inform the local.

    So for example,

    in this particular episode it's going to talk about women in Malaysia,

    but I highly recommend thinking about, okay, why is it different in Malaysia

    and how can that inform my own thinking when it comes to you?

    Recruiting for science education in the classes that I work with.

    Okay.

    So here's a quote from page 889 that kind of talks about, well,

    why is it important to look at the Malaysian case study?

    And when I read this fairly lengthy quote, think about how these numbers,

    the percentages are very different compared to in the United States.

    Quote,

    The Malaysian case is interesting for gender and technology studies

    because of the gender ratios

    in the computer science and IT sectors of Malaysian industry.

    For instance, women constituted

    of Computer Science University since Malaysia USM

    and 66% of the students in computer science

    and information technology at the University of Malaya

    during the academic year 2001 to 2002,

    as early as 1990 and 1991, women comprise

    intake and computer related courses in tertiary institutions

    among Master's degree and Ph.D.

    students. At USM, more than 50% were women.

    And of the ten professors in the department in 2003, seven were women.

    There also is a high percentage of women in the professional information and

    computing technology

    sector.

    Although Malaysian labor force statistics are not broken down,

    according to specific education attainments, women comprise 44%

    of professionals and 38.9% of technicians and associate professionals.

    ICT and computer science professionals

    are normally grouped in these statistics categories.

    So those numbers are very different than what we typically talk

    about in the United States.

    So it's important to look into this and go, Well, why is it so different there?

    So the author suggests that in Malaysia is important in particular to consider

    not just gender, but the ethnic and class inequalities

    that can influence these demographics.

    This means that we cannot focus on the gender per se,

    but must also investigate the complex interrelations of gender, class, age

    and ethnicity in a multi-ethnic society such as Malaysia.

    Quote from page 1891.

    So I totally agree that we tend to focus way too much on numbers

    and not the context surrounding the numbers

    and the intersections between these different demographics.

    So, for example, knowing that I identify as non-binary

    does nothing to tell you about why I went into CSS education

    after multiple years and degrees in music education.

    Now, the same is true for the kids that we work with,

    the ones who elect to take these classes or are required to take CEOs classes

    because a single demographic marker is but one small piece of a very large puzzle

    that is unique to each student that we work with in this study.

    What kind of help illuminate some of that?

    Not to do the study, the author looked at a variety of documents, some articles,

    employment statistics, etc., as well as a questionnaire

    that was sent out to 150 students who were taking a computer ethics course,

    and then some interviews with graduate students, lecturers, professors, etc.

    So a variety of different data sources went into this particular study.

    So the next main section of this paper is called Quotas, Ethnicity and Gender.

    Now, one really important historical thing to note

    is that at the University of Malaya has a quota system

    that strongly influenced which applicants were favored to attend the university.

    So the system basically stated

    that 50% of students in the university had to be women.

    Patara.

    Apologies for if I mispronounce that,

    but it roughly translates to sons of the soil, i.e.

    indigenous Malays.

    So what this policy or quota basically means is that non-Indigenous

    groups such as Chinese and Indian students who attended university

    could not constitute more than 50% of the students admitted to the university.

    In this perspective, race becomes a more pertinent and pervasive

    social category than gender,

    and it possibly in somewhat paradox, likely operates more effectively

    to include women than many other inclusion strategies that have tried thus far.

    However, in this case, some Malay women were being positively affected

    by those inclusion measures, while Indian and Chinese women are not,

    end quote, age 893.

    So while they have this quota, in effect, it may be helping some of the gender

    disparities that we tend to see in places like the United States.

    However, this approach was considered to be an issue or a source of contention

    among some of the people that were interviewed

    for this particular study because it favored some populations,

    while it is favoring others in relation to ethnicity.

    Now, another interesting finding for this particular study was that, quote,

    None of the computer science students I interviewed associated

    computer technology with specific masculine characteristics.

    Instead, they expressed surprise that this was the case in Western Europe.

    In quote from page 894.

    Now, in the next page, they say, quote, However, when we examine how interviewees

    suppose that women's work is situated

    with indoor spaces symbolically connected to computing,

    it becomes clear that a division solely by gender

    would misrepresent the complex hierarchy of bodies.

    Computer science was generally perceived as suitable occupation

    for women, irrespective of social categories.

    While civil engineering was defined as a masculine field

    because of its outdoor working environment and exposure to critical situations

    such as confronting foreign laborers at construction sites and the like.

    In quotes from page 895 and a little bit further in this particular paragraph,

    quote, I could not help wondering about the chief engineer of the big project,

    a woman from mainland China, who evidently had spent uncountable hours

    in the hot sun managing the project as if the male engineer had read my mind.

    He said, Well,

    I mean, the female engineers in Malaysia, engineers from China, they are different.

    This is one of the many examples in my materials of how gender intersects

    with race as a social category that operates through different

    spatial practices and helps men to create spaces of their own

    and to keep women circumscribed by situated body politics

    with its plethora of rules for what certain women can and cannot do.

    End quote from page 895.

    Okay, so that was a lot of quotes that I just read.

    What the author is basically saying is that the people that were interviewed

    for this particular study did not necessarily consider to be gender

    as important of a factor for determining if you go into computer science education

    as much as something like race and gender was considered

    by the participants,

    it was in relation to whether you were working inside or outside.

    So if you're outside, that's considered to be more masculine job

    and if you're inside, that was considered to be more feminine job, even if it was

    similar tasks and understandings and concepts

    just applied in different work environments.

    Now, what led to this, the author posits, is that there is a large scale

    export led industrialization of the country in the 1970s and eighties

    that led to an increase in women in it in particular.

    And the reason why is because there was an influx of Java opportunities

    that required recruiting.

    Low paid individuals and women were targeted for this particular set of jobs.

    Another factor that the author mentioned is the underachieving men,

    and that's a quote from the paper itself.

    So the author notes that men appear less motivated and qualified than women

    pursuing, quote, serious subjects such as engineering, science and management.

    And the author goes on to describe that

    this form of masculinity is a performance of a gender role

    that is socially and culturally situated within local contexts,

    rather than a global narrative of what it means to be a man.

    So if you listen to the episode two weeks ago

    that was talking about Butler's paper on gender as performance

    or performative, this is basically what the author is referring to right here.

    If you haven't listened to that particular episode, I highly recommend it.

    So because of these historical pushes for low paid individuals to work within

    this particular field in an indoor setting, there was a large number of women

    in the field since the new careers entered the workforce decades ago.

    Now, interestingly, some respondents were perplexed when the author asked questions

    about the balance of genders within the field.

    Quote, Even to raise questions on this topic often elicited surprise,

    such as in the response from a second year student My Moonies.

    Why do you ask that?

    Is that a problem when getting such responses?

    I tried to explain that is a problem in Western countries,

    which is why I was interested in the Malaysian case.

    The theory that a critical mass of women is necessary to secure a gender balance.

    Recruitment is frequently discussed

    in research on women, in science and engineering

    and computer science in particular.

    However, in academic as well as everyday discourse in computer science departments,

    it seems that gender balance simply isn't discussed as a problem.

    A preoccupation with this question

    by Western researchers like myself may strike respondents in this context

    as an imposition of an irrelevant concern for them.

    Race and class, interspersed with certain mainstream gendered questions,

    are more salient to concerns about exclusion and inclusion

    in higher education in professional careers.

    Gender is not necessarily articulated as an issue in the professionals fair,

    as long as it is confined into the familiar, symbolic

    as well as material spaces that I discussed earlier.

    In other words, gender is much less salient in relation to race and class.

    Input from page 900.

    Now to kind of summarize the main point of this.

    I'm going to read a final quote from page 902.

    I argue that gender and technology studies need to pay more attention to culturally

    situated, analyzes that bring local gender discourses into the picture.

    Computing and computer science are numerically dominated by men

    and symbolically charged with masculinity in many Western countries.

    But in Malaysia, they are situated within local gender

    discourses that change the polarity of the charge.

    It is thus crucial to investigate relational aspects of gender, including

    positional relations of women and men with other relevant social categories.

    Intersecting and shaping gender relations.

    In quote from page 902.

    Okay. So that was kind of the main paper itself.

    The paper is basically demonstrating how the gender roles were almost flipped

    compared to what's going on in the United States in terms of more women

    are in the field and there are men in the technology fields.

    So it was asking questions like, well,

    why is it that that is the case in this particular country?

    So the main argument is that

    we need to actually consider some more of the local context and histories,

    policies, etc., that are influencing demographics like this.

    And we can't just assume that just because something is a problem

    in the United States, that is a problem in other countries,

    or in this case in Western countries, we can't assume that it's a problem

    in non-Western countries.

    So this is a really interesting study to read.

    I do have a couple of lingering questions or thoughts.

    So one of them is in what ways to the demographics in the communities

    you work with not match the national demographics.

    Now, I once had a professor who actually asked us to look at that,

    and so we were asked to look at what were the demographics of the students

    in the voluntary classes that students could elect to attend

    and see how that matched not only the local community

    but the larger communities

    such as in the region or the state or national demographics,

    and then ask questions around, well, why do I have more or less

    of particular demographics compared to these other areas?

    So I highly recommend going through that process.

    Now, when you explore this and based off of this particular paper,

    also consider what histories are.

    Context may have led to that particular difference

    and then follow up with something like how might knowing those histories

    or contexts inform your approach for problematize and addressing

    those imbalances?

    So, for example, if you're trying to recruit more students

    from locally marginalized communities or identities,

    how can your understanding of history and local contexts inform how you recruit

    specific communities to participate in your sex education classes

    that don't just look at the demographics of who is and is not within

    the classes that you work with, but consider the histories,

    the contexts, the policies, the representation or lack thereof, etc.

    and how those things might inform who's actually electing to attend your class.

    Once you have a better understanding of that, then you might be able

    to figure out some interesting solutions for increasing numbers in those areas.

    And a final question that I have is

    how can we get to know the kids we work with by seeking to understand and learn

    more about their intersectional identities without centralizing students

    into a particular demographic or group of demographics.

    In other words, using myself as an example,

    if somebody were my teacher, they might look at me and go, Oh,

    Jared's nonbinary, so nonbinary individuals like X, Y and Z.

    That would be a form of a centralizing

    in that it is making assumptions based off of characteristics.

    It's basically treating a non-binary person as an abstract

    identity and saying, Oh, because they identify this way,

    therefore they must think or value or believe X, Y and Z.

    Now, if we think about this in relation to a group of demographics,

    we might think of this in relation to the intersectionality that might occur.

    So if we look at the different identities that I have, again,

    thinking of the example that I just gave, the teacher would see, Oh, Jared is

    white comes from a middle class family and is non-binary.

    Therefore they're like the other white, non-binary, middle class family students

    that I work with that it would be a form of like group centralization,

    which can lead to some problems because then you're making assumptions

    and not actually getting to know the individuals that you're working with.

    Now, that being said, as much as I try and encourage teachers to really focus on

    getting to know students at the individual level,

    I also recognize how difficult that that is.

    I've worked in multiple districts that have made it so that I rotated

    between several hundred, if not over a thousand kids each week.

    So it was very difficult to get to know several hundred kids

    when I only see them for like 30 minutes a week or maybe for a three week period.

    And then I wouldn't see them again until the next quarter.

    So I know it's difficult, but it's something we should strive for.

    All right.

    So that was my quick summary of this particular paper.

    And some of my lingering questions are thoughts on it.

    I hope this was useful for you

    if you haven't listened to the other

    gender related episodes that I've done on this little mini series makes

    you listen to the episode two weeks ago and then the episode or weeks ago

    as they are

    all kind of related to discussions around gender and computer science education.

    If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing in some way,

    either by posting on social media or simply sharing it to a friend

    or going on to the nearest street corner and saying, Hey,

    you should listen to the CSK podcast, just yell it out loud.

    I'm sure people will love it.

    Stay tuned next week for another interview

    and the following week for another unpacking scholarship episode.

    I hope you're all staying safe and are having a wonderful week.

Abstract

“This paper reports an investigation on how and why computer science in Malaysia is dominated by women. Inspired by recent critical interventions in gender and technology studies, the paper aims to open up more culturally situated analyses of the gendering of technology or the technology of gendering, with the Malaysian case exemplifying the core of the argument. The paper argues along four different strands of critical thought: (1) a critique of the analytical asymmetry in the process of co-production in gender and technology studies; (2) a critique of a western bias in gender and technology studies, advocating more context sensitivity and focus on the cultural embeddedness of gender and technology relations; (3) a critique that pays more attention to spatial practices and body politics in regard to race, class and gender in relation to technology; and (4) a critique of ‘western’ positional notions of gender configurations that opens up for more fluid constructions of gender identity, including the many crossovers between relational and positional definitions of femininity and masculinity.”

Author Keywords

Body politics, Computer science, Gender, Intersectional analysis, Race

My One Sentence Summary

This paper “points to a western bias of gender and technology studies, and argues for cross-cultural work and intersectional understandings including race, class, age and sexuality” (p. 885).

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

  • In what ways do the demographics in the communities you work with not match the national demographics?

    • What histories or contexts may have led to that difference?

    • How might knowing those histories or contexts inform your approach for problematizing and addressing those imbalances?

  • How can we get to know the kids we worth with by seeking to understand and learn more about their intersectional identities without essentializing students into a particular demographic or group of demographics?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

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